Shopping day in Nunam Iqua, Alaska - The Mudflats [View All]

[Blue_In_AK]

Nunam Iqua is a Native village upriver from Emmonak. The Mudflats has an excellent guest post by a resident of Nunam Iqua, describing shopping day. I'll never complain about anything EVER again.

http://www.themudflats.net/2009/01/25/shopping-day-in-nunam-iqua-alaska/

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January 24, 2009

Today my husband and I decided to travel the 25 miles to Emmonak to get groceries. Here is what getting groceries entails in Nunam Iqua.

We got up and had to build a fire as the house was getting chilly and we had run out of stove oil a couple of days ago. Then we made coffee, using water that we had packed the night before from the watering point across the village. We took a 30 gallon Rubbermaid trash can (our water bucket) that we use STRICTLY for water storage across to the other side of the village and with two tokens (tokens are one dollar each) we got 20 gallons of water. We went across by snow machine towing our sled with the water bucket in it. Once we filled it we carefully brought it back across to our house and then lifted it out of the sled and up the steps into our porch and then into the house.

After having coffee my husband went out to chop firewood to keep the house warm. First he had to start the chainsaw and saw the logs he had gotten from across the river and then split them into the right size for our woodstove. While he was doing that I checked to ensure our baby sitter, my sister-in-law, was going to be able to come up to watch our 18 month old daughter, Cecelia (CC). It’s too long of a ride to take our baby with us during the winter and it’s too cold also.

My daughter, Cecelia, woke up and I changed her diaper make a mental note that I HAD TO REMEMBER to get diapers we are getting low. Then I made her breakfast. I felt bad because we had run out of bread and canned/dried fruit for her so her breakfast was dry cereal, cheese, and some 100% fruit juice gummy snacks plus a sippy cup full of very very diluted grape juice with her liquid vitamins in it. We don’t let her have anything but milk and water during the day because I worry about her having too much sugar.

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